Irish Examiner View: Already stretched food banks braced for huge surge

When the histories of this pandemic come to be written, most will follow a predicable path. Many will start with the moment the virus was identified and move on to the impact it had on an unprepared world. These histories will consider how medical, political, and social systems fared, whether they rose to the challenge or were swamped by it.

Some will, maybe in the third quarter of the book, consider local circumstances and individual countries’ responses. All of these will be revealing, many will be educational and worthwhile. Some will be too revealing, too painful for some countries where poor decisions unnecessarily cost lives. America, amazingly and sadly, is in that category.